MARTA’S TABLE

We have spent days help­ing to clear the lit­tle farm­house on the hill. Chat­tels and wares have been drain­ing from it for days, one car-load at a time, the part­ing painfully long.

It has been a light­house, a thin three-story bea­con of fam­ily, open to life and the el­e­ments, iso­lated, one step away from the vil­lage with bliss­ful views of the val­ley: a kind place be­cause Marta made it so. In truth it is not so small, but rather a puz­zle of small spaces and nar­row stairs and door­ways, of an age and piece­meal evo­lu­tion be­fore con­for­mity and reg­u­la­tion. Char­ac­ter­ful if not so pretty.

What mat­tered, as al­ways, was the heart, and yet de­spite clear­ing every­thing else the heart was still stuck there.

Marta, chil­dren now grown, is up­root­ing to a more man­age­able, new space in the vil­lage so she can care more ably for her poorly hus­band. The ful­fil­ments of their lit­tle farm home, where we and other close friends have shared so many mo­ments with the fam­ily, could not be rec­on­ciled with the greater chal­lenges that come to us all.

So there it sat, locked in, Marta’s table, the last piece of fur­ni­ture now ab­surdly iso­lated with all other threads of the fam­ily ta­pes­try pulled out. It could not leave be­cause, dur­ing the 25-year-long evo­lu­tion of their home, a new, nar­rower front door and frame had been bricked in. Marta, some­how, was try­ing to come to terms with the thought she must aban­don it.

It weighed on all of us.

Ta­bles mean so much, are more im­por­tant than all. It is the piece of our lives, frankly, be­yond value, the human race’s an­swer to the col­lec­tive sorry messes and dishar­monies of today. Hid­den in plain sight, we for­sake this es­sen­tial focus for fam­ily, com­mu­nity, shar­ing, laugh­ter, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, good­ness and fun­da­men­tal well­be­ing at our peril.

A Syr­ian fam­ily being shown into a bare, clean and safe space, a refuge, a new be­gin­ning in a new land, being asked what they needed most of all replied with­out hes­i­ta­tion “table”.

I tried to dis­man­tle Marta’s hefty table, but the old metal fix­ings were torn and the screw­driver would not hold. We tried to ma­noeu­vre it through the maze to­wards the wider exit from the work­shop at the back of the house, but the last nar­row door­way de­feated us. For a while the table sat wedged on its side.

All the down­stairs win­dows have bars, so that was that.

Or was it? Could we get it up­stairs?

After the long and steady flow of pos­ses­sions down the steps there we were, with the last of all, the heav­i­est, heav­ing it up. It even­tu­ally ar­rived on the land­ing with less than a mil­lime­tre to spare.

We un­bolted the old dou­ble door on to the bal­cony above the porch, roped the table and low­ered it down into the gar­den.

The heart now beats again in the new home.

Cher­ish our ta­bles. Given them, our­selves and each other time. Free of de­vices. Share. It is the way.

Happy Christ­mas .